Thinking about Critical Thinking

from Cultivating Judgment by John Nelson

"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."

                                                                                                                                                                                Francis Bacon

When we practice critical thinking, we are, in Bacon's words, training ourselves to "weigh and consider."  We are cultivating judgment.

Critical thinking has been defined variously as

            the process of making informed decisions

            applied informal logic,

            an interplay of techniques necessary for effective problem solving ,

            and as thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal-directed.

The word "critical" derives from the Greek word for judgment, kritikos, and one common element in all notions of critical thinking is good judgment in assessing information about the world and assigning value to that information.

Matthew Lipman, for instance, defines critical thinking as "skillful, responsible thinking that is conducive to judgment because it relies on criteria, is self-correcting, and is sensitive to context."

. . . critical thinking focuses on making judgments in problematic situations -  that is, open-ended or unstructured situations that challenge us with uncertainty, offer multiple options or potential solutions and require multiple criteria for determining the effectiveness of solutions.

Joanne Kurfiss defines critical thinking in this context as "a rational response to questions that can't be answered definitively or solutions that can't be verified empirically."